Learning Delight Revolutionized Rural India’s Education System

Harshal Gohil and Vandan Kamdar jointly introduced Learning Delight. The venture has a noble motive to engage students in learning from rural and semi urban areas. This digital tool is a helping hand for teachers to involve students in learning. In the year 2010, this enterprise started with providing the digital solution to 5 schools. Now standing in 2016, Learning Delight have roped in 6,600 rural government schools. This Startup is based in Gujarat with its wings spread over 9 districts in Gujarat.

The aim with which Learning Delight started

The founders believed in an education which is beyond grades and high scores. In their own way they wanted to challenge the prevailing education system. They aimed at providing a fun learning environment to students, where teachers can explore the inertia to learn within students. This includes animation, riddles and puzzles to engage children to think, learn and grow. The riddles and puzzles are based on the syllabus of state board so that children learn prescribed syllabus without having to read theoretically for exams.

Children are always up for fun learning but teachers are not game with new teaching concepts. Especially if the new concept is a digitalized tool, teachers are inhibited to replace traditional education format. The challenge did not deter the founders. They continued with the struggle to convince teachers that how this tool can ease the teaching pressures from teachers also.

Learning Delight software in a rural classroom in Kutch

The dawn of the idea to start a learning tool

They were in between their MBA course in Nirma Institute of technology. While in a break they visited Bhuj and in the stay they closely observed the teaching system of the rural Gujarat. They were more intrigued as even they had experience of early regional education. What they observed was that most of technology in the market was based in English. That’s when they decided to introduce a digital tool which has desi, I.e regional language components. Secondly they were adamant in making teachers understand that this tool is as much to help teachers, as much as it is for the students.

The USP of this model of digital tool

Rural India is a potential future of our country. We wanted to do something for the grass root level of education. They formatted our digital tool in a way not only to make education fun and imploring for students but also to make it easy for teachers to implement. In the same hand we had to keep it affordable so that every rural school can avail it.

If there are others who are making learning tools, then do not view them as competitors. Even they are doing their bit for rural India. But looking at them, it’s clear they understand the base requirement of rural education. Their digital tool are customized and personalized for teachers and students across rural Gujarat. It becomes easy as they personally understand how the teachers can best implement the fun learning method among students.

They have trudged the extra length to involve local NGOs in their dream. As NGOs promoted their tool, it was achievable to spread the digital tool in various schools in rural Gujarat.

The achievement

Rural students now understand the concept of IT better than before. The digital India had a stark difference between urban and rural areas. The gap has thinned in this six years. Children are now more keen to come to school therefore attendance have increased. This digi tool have enhanced the teaching prowess of teachers of rural schools.

They started with five schools in 2011. Big brands believed their product and came to their aid. To name few brands are Transpek Industries Ltd, Adani Foundation and Excel Corp Care. This year Rotary International have stepped in to help this venture spread more in regions in Gujarat.

Their future plans

Seeing our belief and intention the Gujarat Government have affiliated our digi tool to Gujarat Council of Education Research and Training. We do want to limit our digi tool to only Gujarat. We have plans to start a similar digi education tool in Rajasthan in three to four months. There on in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.

Startups generally celebrate every small reason, But if the reason is about a milestone achievement then it makes a big difference. This victorious path is not an easier one and we have faced and surpassed many challenges in the last few months to meet our target of half a million visitors. While our ambition is a much bigger number, the target we achieved was planned towards the end of the financial year and our team made it possible 4 months in advance.

Indeed a great effort by Shishir Kumar and the entire team and a special thanks to the avid readers of IndianCEO for following us. IndianCEO is indeed my first bet in to media business and believe me this is just the beginning. Early next year we have some great product announcements and our next milestone is not far away.